I just made my first voluntary student loan payment of $800. That $800 was meant to be an ipod for The Boy, a couple trips to snowplanet, and probably spending money when I’m in Melbourne. Sigh.

See, New Zealand has this great scheme at the moment. They are quite happy to give anyone a loan if they are enrolled at a qualified tertiary education facility. They are also quite happy to give you $150 a week, if you are enrolled full time. They also have this great thing where if you stay in New Zealand, they won’t charge you interest on this loan. Great! Fantastic for getting people qualified!

So you do what I did, and you meander through your degree, and graduate. And then you start another degree, and decide half way through that you disagree with what you are being taught (because apparently common sense isn’t part of ECE anymore) and so you leave and get a real job. The minimum repayments came out of my wages every month and I never really worried about it. Or noticed it. Or cared in anyway about it.

Until I discovered that if I only paid the minimum repayments it would take me 19 years 10 months to pay off the entire loan.

Colour me gobsmacked that I’m in this much debt because when I was 18 I took that $150 a week and drank it. Like a fish. Because my social life dictated I do so.

The problem is that I don’t WANT to stay in New Zealand for the next 19 years. I wish to live elsewhere at some point. Party hard in London Town. Ride the back bowls in Switzerland. Eat waffles and fried chicken in New York! If I leave New Zealand for more than 6 months I get charged interest. And that interest is NOT pretty! A friend who came back home to visit said that for the last six months he got charged $4000+ in interest on his Student Loan. FOUR GRAND!

Then I worked out that if I voluntarily pay an extra $800 a month I could be debt free in 4 and a half years. This includes the OTHER great goverment scheme which pays an extra 10% on top of your repayments if you voluntarily pay back more than $500 a year.

Lucky for me I’m not paying rent at the moment, and can afford to live AND pay back this ginormous loan. Probably not for the entire 4 and a half years (I refuse to be living at home that whole time) but enough to make a serious dent in it.

So, advice to all those 18 year olds wanting to live it up large on the governments money. DO NOT DO IT! Don’t get sucked in. I am paying for all those years now, supporting my younger self and it is fucking painful! Yes, get qualified. But borrow only what you have to to cover the course costs. Do not borrow the money to socialise. Do not borrow the money to go on snow trips. Do not borrow the money so you can buy that sweet $300 hoodie because ‘its The Shit’.

Students are meant to be poor. People with full time jobs? Not meant to be poor. It appears I did the inverse, and handing over that $800 today? Super. Super. Super. Painful.

Being debt free though? Totally worth it.

The other day I learnt that an acquaintance of mine has MS. It’s a horrible disease, and the more I read about it the more horrified I am for her quality of life.

The thing is, we weren’t always just acquaintances. When we were at school we were in the same group of very close friends – the same group of friends that I still meet for coffee every few weeks. Unfortunately we all kinda edged her off outside of school – and as sad as I am to say this, I was probably the worst.

We did the same course at uni together, but as time went on I just thought she was plain weird. She would say odd things, or be random and I really didn’t understand her. There weren’t any big events or landmarks that caused the shift in our friendship, I basically just thought she was weird, I didn’t understand and so eventually we drifted apart (quite intentionally on my part, I think). By the time we graduated, we weren’t really friends anymore.

A couple of years passed with very little contact between us, and then mutual friends had weddings. Small talk with her was always a little awkward – I was big with the neon ‘weird’ signs, and would excuse myself from the experience (I’m horrible at small talk anyway). A few times I’d talk to our friends about it, but most of them hadn’t seen her in ages and agreed that their small talk experiences were just as awkward.

And then we found out she has MS. And I’m horrified at my behaviour. And, let me be clear, it is not out of pity. We USED to be good friends, and I’m sure this stems from the care that we had for each other back then. I’m horrified at all that she has been through, and all that she will go through, and even more so at my behaviour towards her.

And I’m torn – I now understand why she is the way she is. I couldn’t have known before now that her slight weirdness was because of something as dire as this.

My problem is this – I feel horrible. I shouldn’t have edged her out because I thought things were slightly weird between us. MS or no, what I did was awful, and I shouldn’t have been the way I was. I feel horrible that it’s only with learning that she had MS that I feel bad about what I have done. I feel horrible that by intentionally edging her out she lost a friend to open up to, a friend to support her through this. I feel horrible that I am now on the outside, and have no idea how to help, or even if she WANTS my help.

I imagine that if she knew I knew, she would be embarrassed. She wouldn’t want my pity, or my help. I was horrible to her, and new knowledge can’t change that.

But in saying that, if she didn’t have an MS, if she was just the way she was because that’s who she is, would it have been wrong of me to edge away? I am one of those people who try to be very clear about the kind of people I wish to surround myself with. If I think you are horrible, I won’t talk to you unless I have to. If you hurt me in a way that is unnecessary and needless, then don’t expect a friendship to follow that. But if you are just weird and I don’t understand you? What then?

I wonder who else I’ve edged out, intentionally pushed away because I didn’t understand the differences between them and me. I wonder who else I’ve hurt, who else I could have helped, and who else I was rude to.

Today a big old personal flaw has been shown to me, and I’m embarrassed about it. And right now I don’t know what to do about it, or even what I CAN do. Sigh.

So, the last few days have been fantastically busy! The Bride-to-be is back (hurrah!!) so yesterday we walked the dogs up at the park (she has two griffins, it was novel to see Quinn with dogs his own size!) and had lunch at Cornwall Park Restaurant which was nice and fancy!

I’m still writing a rather intense essay for ECE but ended up going to see Street Kings with Fx which was novel. We had dinner and ended up exploring the parks around the coast again, which is always a nice walk.

And today, I went shopping with Zo and Iti – she’s getting so big!! For serious, check out those chubby checks! XD!

And next to that face, its all ‘essay? what essay?’

So, as part of working this stint in an Early Childcare Centre we have been instructed to ‘reflect’. I understand that the point of having to do reflections means that we have to look at ourselves and our teaching practice objectively. It also means that we have to actively *do* something about it, which I hadn’t quite banked on until I got to the ‘Act’ part of a “difficult child” reflection. Because, you see, this child is all kinds of difficult, and I don’t really know how to help that.

At 8am its not so bad, you do some talking, you do some practicing of words that you can use instead of your fists, you explain and agree on what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. You get the child to apologise (if someone needed apologising to) and you go on your merry way. Rinse and repeat as needed (which WILL be five minutes later). By 4 oclock and a billion million repetitions, your pretty much out of patience, are all kinds of frustrated and will end up just chanting ineffectively ‘use words, not fists’ and scoop up whatever child is crying for cuddles and a nap, while trying to convince yourself out of wringing Miss Difficult Child’s pretty little neck.

However reflecting meant that I had to look at *my* teaching style in terms of her. I had to look at *why* she might be acting the way she is, and what part of *my* behaviour is causing her behaviour. I had to apply actual learning theories to her behaviour, and mine, and some more into processes to remove that behaviour on both parts. And I had to do within the confines of the centres rules and regulations. All fine, theory I have no problem with. Its the actually *doing* part that I’m a little concerned with, as its not a nice little library I’m working it, its with a living, breathing growing *child*.

. . .

I feel totally unprepared. A month and a half of theory IS NOT adequate training for going up against a small army of over two’s.

For serious.

So, the thing about stress at uni is that you will pour over and perfect the first essay in the assignment period. You will take make everyone you know read it and demand they tell you how to make it better. You will badger your lecturer, visit the Student Learning Centre, and you will read half the library in attempt to enrich your essay with all this research. You will structure your essay so it is rational and pleasant to read. Your ideas will flow in a logical order, and your conclusion will bolster the points of the essay.

However, a week and half later in your fourth/fifth/sixth assignment, you will throw a bunch of words together, your paragraphs will be clunky and won’t quite make the point your going for and you’ve only read half your readings. You won’t really know what your talking about, but continue to blather on in attempt to make things ‘fit’.

. . .

That is where I am at now, at the last essay in this assignment period. And I’m ready to hand it in, badly written ideas and references be damned.